Geoffrey Chaucer
The Periods of his Literary Production:
The English period (1386-1400)
The major work of period is The Canterbury Tales, with its realistic setting in contemporary England.
There's a difference from the other periods: the English influence is simply the influence of the breadth, scope, and zest of Chaucer's own land and age, unlike the French and Italian. In both cases, he specific literary influences are French, Italian, and Latin, but the setting is on the road between London and Canterbury, and no longer in dream-worlds or in ancient Troy (which was the case for the French and Italian periods).
However, Chaucer was always an innovator. He:
-He was the first English poet to impress his readers as a personality in his own right.
-He was the first English poet to analyze his characters psychologically;
-He was the first English poet to draw sharply individualized portraits;
-He was the first English poet to deal estensively with the contemporary scene;
-He was the first to use many of the meters and stanza forms which have become standard in English poetry;
-He introduced Italian literature to England;
The Italian period (1373-85)
went to ltaly to arrange a commercial treaty with the Genoese. This journey was reinforced by another visit to ltaly in 1378, and had a tremendous effect on Chaucer.
Dante, who was dead for half a century, was already a classic, while Petrarch and Boccaccio were nearing the end of their literary careers.
Chaucer relied heavily on the works of these author for the rest of his life.
These works taught him:
-The House of Fame (c. 1374-80),
-The Parliament of Fowls (c. 1377-86),
-The Legend of Good Women (1380-86)
Those poems still contain many of the old familiar features of this French literary type, even though Chaucer breaks with the conventional patterns by:
his broader range of ideas,
his greater subtlety of characterization, and
his attitude of humorous detachment.
Thus, the poems of this period of his show progress in his mastery of:
-meter;
-style;
-technique;
-rethoric;
-to seek the rhythms and idioms of popular speech.
-to individualize his characters and give them dramatic intensity;
Sottoargomento
1. The French Period (to 1372)
Under French influence He:
produced his first ambitious original poem, The Book of the Duchess (1369).
It's an elegy on the death of Blanche, the wife of Chaucer's patron John of Gaunt, written in the form and manner of contemporary French poets, and with considerable borrowing from them.
In this poem there are distinctive marks of Chaucer's individual genius:
-the characteristic flashes of psychological insight.
- the sense of immediacy in the portrait of the bereaved knight;
-the use of the setting to intensify the dreamlike mood of the poem;
began his translation of the Romance of the Rose
He began his literary career under the influence of a medieval French literature.
It included:
It included also contemporary poets, such as:
-Froissart.
-Machaut;
-Deschamps;
-fabliaux.
-romances;
-satires;
